Can 'feather foot' knock oldest bird off its perch?

A SMALL Chinese dinosaur with large feathers on its leg has stunned the world of palaeontology. The fossilised leg bones of Pedopenna daohugouensis reveal it to be as bird-like as archaeopteryx, till now the oldest known bird. But its discoverers think that Pedopenna may be even older.

Until two years ago, when flight feathers were discovered on the hind legs of the small dinosaur Microraptor gui, no one suspected that back legs also played a role in flight (New Scientist, 25 January 2003, p 14). Long leg feathers also turned up on some archaeopteryx specimens on closer examination, but whether they were important for the first flyers or developed later is still a mystery.

Xu Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing, who discovered both fossils, says the new find shows Microraptor's leg feathers were not an evolutionary fluke. And although the Pedopenna specimen is only ...

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